Mostar, Bosnia: A City Divided By Two Countries

Mostar, Bosnia: A City Divided By Two Countries

2011-11-25 09:11:28-05

If you were walking down a street in a random city and you saw Croatian flags flying in front of the government buildings, a football stadium with a Croatian football team playing inside and a Croatian University on the main avenue, what country do you think you would be in?

Of course, it would obviously be Croatia. However, in the situation that I’m about to describe, you would actually be quite wrong with that guess.

And thus begins the complicated tale of the city of Mostar, a small city of 130,000 people located in the southern region of Bosnia & Herzegovina.

THE RECENT HISTORY OF MOSTAR

During the Bosnian War of 1991-1995, Mostar was heavily involved in the fighting, finding themselves under constant attack. However, what most people don’t realize is that the forces doing the attacking in this region were not always the same as the forces that were attacking Sarajevo to the north. While Sarajevo was being surrounded and devastated by the Serbian Army, Mostar was dealing with attacks from both the Serbians and the Croatians. Yes, the Croatians.

And the Croatians attacked the city quite hard, bombarding the predominantly Muslim areas of Mostar in an attempt to try and bite off a few chunks of extra territory from southern Bosnia and tack it on to Croatia. In fact, the Croatian government even established the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia in the Mostar region, upon which they immediately, and forcefully, drove local Bosnians from their homes in order to separate the Bosnian and Croatian populations. And once this division was created, the Croatian forces proceeded to attack the Bosnians quite brutally.

Mostar’s most well-known landmark is its Old Bridge, a unique, single arch stone bridge that crosses the Neretva River and has acted as the main connection between the two sides of the Old Town for centuries. During the Bosnian War, this bridge was destroyed, eventually crumbling into the water below after sustaining two straight days of direct missile attacks. However, contrary to popular belief (as well as the stories that every Croatian tour guide leading group tours in Mostar will tell you), it was actually Croatian forces that destroyed the bridge, not the Serbian Army.

Then, once this incident took place, and with the lifeline of Mostar gone, the city was no longer capable of defending itself in any way whatsoever. Soon afterward, Croatia decided to offer a ‘deal’ to the local Bosnian government. They offered to swap sides and team up with the Bosnian forces in order to help drive the Serbian forces away from the area altogether. But, and this is no simple ‘but’, in exchange for this much-needed assistance, the city of Mostar would be required to unofficially relinquish much of it’s control over it’s own city to the Croatian government.

And so, this explains why it is almost impossible to believe that current day Mostar is actually a part of Bosnia and not a part of Croatia.

WALKING AROUND MOSTAR TODAY

Just walk down the main street, Bulevar Hrvatskih Branitelja (Hrvatska is the Croatian name for Croatia), that divides the two parts of town and you’ll start to notice the differences. Turn off the main road and head into the Bosnian part of town and you can spend some time wandering through the nicely renovated Old Town, a beautiful, medieval neighborhood that comprises just a small part of the overall city. Life in these parts is simple, with tourism acting as the main source of income for most residents.

Walk in the other direction and you’ll soon enter the Croatian side of town, a significantly larger area that’s full of 10+ story apartment buildings, shopping malls and wide avenues, an area that has a much more modern feel overall. It’s still Bosnia of course, but suddenly the atmosphere changes significantly.

It is on this side, the Croatian side, where I noticed the large Croatian flags flying in front of the Bosnian government buildings, with only small Bosnian flags flying off to the side. You read that correctly. There are Croatian flags flying in front of Bosnian government buildings.

This side of town is also where I came across the main football stadium in the city. Apparently, the local Bosnian team was kicked out of the stadium after the war and relocated by the Croatian government to a crappy high-school stadium some 5 kms north of town. The reason? The Croatian government wanted to use the stadium as the home field for one of their more popular Croatian football teams that now travels from Croatia to Mostar in order to play their home games. You can actually see the name of the Croatian team right next to a Croatian flag on the wall of the stadium.

And then there is the University of Mostar which is actually a Croatian university that is far more modern and respected than the local, decrepit Bosnian university. However, only Croatians are allowed to attend the Croatian university, even though it is located in Bosnia. I spoke with several Bosnians who tried to apply but had their applications rejected because they were told they didn’t speak Croatian, a language that is about 95% the same as Bosnian.

Craziness.

THERE’S EVEN MORE…

Take the Mostar airport for example, a perfectly functional airport just a couple of miles south of the city center that is currently closed. And it all has to do with the town of Medjugorje, a town where several local teenagers claimed to have encountered a vision of the Virgin Mary back in 1981. Naturally, the town instantly became an extremely popular pilgrimage site for Catholics, receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors per year despite the town now appearing as a religious Disneyland.

So, the reason why the Mostar airport is closed is because, these days, all of the thousands of visitors to Medjugorje reach this destination by flying into Dubrovnik, a town in the south of Croatia. They then hop on Croatian-organized and operated bus tours to reach the pilgrimage site. The Croatian government certainly doesn’t want to lose all of the income from these incoming flights and all of these tour groups, so they do not allow the city of Mostar to open up their airport. If it were to open, all of these visitors would start flying to Mostar as it is much closer to Medjugorje than Dubrovnik is to the pilgrimage site.

Once again. Craziness.

LET’S NOT FORGET THE CHURCH

While I’m at it, I might as well mention the ridiculously large church that was being built while I was in Mostar. It was being built on the Croatian side (which is overwhelmingly Catholic), sort of. It was actually being built on one of the main corners in town, right along the line that clearly divides the Bosnian and Croatian neighborhoods. The choice of location for this church was undoubtedly strategic as it was built directly across from the Old Town, which is the main center for the predominantly Muslim Bosnians in Mostar. The steeple from the church can be seen from miles away and it towers over any structure, religious or non-religious, on the Bosnian side.

So now you even have a Croatian church dominating the skyline of a Bosnian city.

It seems to never end….and with every new piece of information I learned, my confusion grew exponentially. Nobody hears about these things at all. And I know there are dozens and dozens of places around the world that operate under shady circumstances, circumstances that very few people will ever uncover or realize, but here in Mostar, I had a chance to learn about one of these places and I was left speechless and completely dumb-founded.

In fact, I don’t even know what else to say about it so I’m just going to end this post here.

Actually, before I do end, I might as well mention that the current mayor of Mostar (remember, this is Bosnia we’re talking about) is a member of the Croatian Democratic Union party. And if you think that’s a bit strange, his major opponents in the last election hailed from such local political parties as the Croatian Coalition, United Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Party of Rights, Croatian Christian Democratic Union, Croatian People’s Union and the Croatian Pure Party of Rights.

Exactly. Quite a fascinating situation indeed.

And if you’re interested in reading my previous post about Bosnia, you can have a look here: Amid The Ruins Of War In Bosnia